The slashed colleague of slain shrink Kathryn Faughey fled to a country hideout, fearing for his life as a meat-cleaver madman was on the loose.

Dr. Kent Shinbach, who police say was the intended target of accused killer David Tar loff, spent a couple of days in the hospital recu perating from cuts to his head and hands. He and Faughey were attacked with knives inside their East 79th Street office on Feb. 12.

But as soon as he was released from New York- Presbyterian/Weill Cor nell hospital, Shinbach – knowing that the killer was still at large – escaped to his sprawling property in Bucks County, Pa., about 90 minutes from the city.

Though the alleged murderer turned out to be a former patient of his, Shinbach did not recognize him – even picking the wrong person out of a lineup later.

“His fear was the killer would find us here,” said a woman at Shinbach’s Bucks County property, which features a large stone home, converted barn and acres of secluded woods.

“That’s what we were afraid of,” that the killer would come and finish what he started.

Shinbach’s fear turned to rage after police captured Tarloff on Feb. 16. It was rage that the system failed to stop Tarloff.

“Now he’s angry,” the woman said.

In 1991, Tarloff’s father, Leonard, took his son to see Shinbach, who diagnosed him with acute paranoid schizophrenia.

Sources say Tarloff was nursing a 17-year-old grudge when he went to Shinbach’s office on Feb. 12 to find him.

Shinbach was behind closed doors with a female patient. So Tarloff allegedly attacked Faughey, a psychologist and Shinbach’s suite mate, hacking her to death with a meat cleaver.

Shinbach heard her screams and came to her aid. Cops say Tarloff slashed him with a knife in the face, hand and head, pinned him to the wall, ripped his wallet from his pants and stole $90 before heading off.

The 70-year-old psychiatrist is now struggling to cope with the ordeal.

“He’s hurting,” said the woman at the country retreat. “It’s been really tough on him physically and emotionally.”

Shinbach is the former director of psychiatry at New York Downtown Hospital. He is married to Natalie Wayne, 65. She, his daughter, Hope, and son-in-law, Mark, all visited him at New York-Presbyterian.

The property is in a small town just across the New Jersey border amid rolling hills, horse farms and bucolic country estates worth millions.